


Breathless

by GloriaMundi



Series: Sentenced [1]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: C17, Grammar BDSM, Historical, M/M, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-06
Updated: 2004-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A single 1200-word sentence. More punctuation than plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathless

The sheer banality of his new role, the emptiness of every word he had spoken that day and every document to which he'd signed his name -- with that too-practiced flourish on the 'n' and his hand cramping as he gripped the quill too tightly, like a sword -- made him think of the sea, made him wonder again how he had come to this desk-bound, duty-bound, honour-bound life away from the sun and the air and the dizzying height of the crow's-nest, a whole world away from everything for which he'd gone to sea as a boy: he'd told the pirate -- "Sparrow," he murmured under his breath: then, with a grin, "**Captain** Sparrow" -- that he served others, not only himself, but that wasn't true, that wasn't true at all, for now on this fine morning (already hot though it was not yet nine o'clock) James Norrington realised for the first time that he served others and not himself; that somehow, while devoting his life to the Crown, the navy and the law, he had forgotten to spare any of that life for himself, had somehow forgotten to live, so much so that it had taken a damned black-hearted pirate to remind him that there was such a thing as freedom, and that it was worth fighting for: freedom, and honour (for he'd had to admit, in deed if not in word, that Jack Sparrow -- Captain Jack Sparrow -- was an honourable man), and ...no, he wouldn't think of Elizabeth and her lowly blacksmith, though he found himself smiling at the thought of them both, so young and so earnest; he wouldn't think of the way that Elizabeth had looked at Will, all radiant and full of joy and with a ... a spontaneity, an honest innocence, which he had not seen in her eyes when she'd accepted his proposal at last (to save Will, his temper whispered; to save her love) ... no, he wouldn't think of them, and he would assuredly not think of Jack Sparrow and the way he'd looked at Norrington, as hot and lewd as any of the whores in the lower town, a look that, remembered, made Norrington's hand cramp again, and brought two distinct realisations to the forefront of his mind: firstly, that he was staring out of the window at the distant ocean while the ink dried pungently on his pen; and secondly -- far, far worse than woolgathering when he should be attending to the King's business -- that he had dreamt of Sparrow last night, dreamt of him standing close (they'd been in a private room at an inn, and even now he remembered the pattern of the cracks in the plaster, which had traced the remembered shape of the Mississippi delta, just as he'd seen it on charts of the Gulf; and for some reason, in the dream, recognising that coded map had seemed more important than the fact of being alone with Jack Sparrow in an upstairs room at an unfamiliar inn), so close that Norrington had felt the heat of Jack's skin, and he'd had to bend his neck to look Jack in the eye; and once he'd looked he couldn't look away, for Jack's eyes were dark and somehow fascinating, and Norrington -- in the dream, he reminded himself, not in his waking life, though his heart was beating faster just at the memory -- had found himself caught, tempted, falling, his own gaze flickering from Jack's eyes to those full lips and his tongue moistening his own lower lip as the thought of kissing Jack (and Jack, oh, kissing him back) blossomed in his mind, where Jack could surely read it for otherwise there was no explanation, even in the dream, for the way that the pirate's eyes had narrowed knowingly, or the shape his mouth had made (a shape that had imparted new and nameless sins to Norrington in the dream, sins he feared he knew of in the waking world) as he'd whispered Norrington's name, his full name which he surely did not know: and just the memory of the dream of that rough-edged, luxuriously rich voice, that mouth, saying "James" had Norrington suddenly, achingly, and ridiculously hard, there in his office in Fort Charles, staring out unseeingly at the cloud-mottled ocean upon which the _Black Pearl_ (scourge of James Norrington's conscience, if nothing else) must even now be sailing, carrying her wicked, beguiling captain to some unknown port, for surely even Jack Sparrow wouldn't dare return to Port Royal mere weeks after cheating the hangman: and Norrington smiled again even as he shook his head, because Jack might be bold but he was no fool, and only in a dream would Jack Sparrow come back simply to hunt Norrington -- tables turned -- and lure him to that private room with its cracked plaster on the wall and the moth-holes in the coverlet trapping his fingers as his hands clenched at the feeling of Jack behind -- Norrington forced his mind back into the waking world, the hot sun-filled room and the smell of dust and ink, before his careering fancy ran entirely away with him: he swore breathlessly and gulped air, caught between damning Jack Sparrow and simply saying his name, between the risk, the embarrassment, the sheer impropriety of even thinking of that ... that pirate's filthy, tar-engrained hands on his body instead of the second draft of the naval architect's proposal for the fortification of Gallows Point, which lay unexamined on the desk before him while he stared out through the open window and thought, beyond reason and dignity and duty, of Jack's hands on him, gold gleaming behind his smile (lest Norrington forget that the sin of desiring this man was compounded by the crime of condoning his piracy) and next, Jack's mouth hot under his own kiss, a kiss without restraint, a kiss that was undeniable evidence -- never mind that it was in a dream -- of what Norrington finally admitted to himself, wordless and choking on his own breath in the hot morning air: he wanted Jack, wanted to feel Jack's hot skin against his own damp hands, wanted to taste Jack's kiss and then, as in his dream (he'd woken almost painfully hard, foolishly dismayed to find that the hand caressing him was his own; perhaps the desperate speed of his strokes thereafter explained the cramp that wrung his fingers this morning) to feel Jack's teeth on his throat, while Jack's hands -- practiced hands, thought Norrington wryly in a small sedate corner of his mind -- busied themselves at the front of his breeches, and Jack pushed his own hard prick against Norrington's hand with a moan that was more felt than heard as his mouth worked avidly down the meridian of Norrington's chest, down to where one hand wrapped firmly around Norrington's cock and the other cupped his balls, and Norrington whispered Jack's name to make Jack look up, and so their eyes met as, in the dark imagined room and in the precarious privacy of his office in the fort, in hope and in disgust, his climax rushed through every muscle in his body and robbed him of the last of his ... breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Twelve hundred words, one sentence: cunningly identified as such by Microsoft Word, which counts 1200 words and yet calculates an average words-per-sentence of 1207


End file.
